Injection molds maintenance

Injection molds have a limited service life as show in below list. Appropriate measure can greatly extend this, however, such measures can be classified on the basic of injection molds maintenance, injection molds storage and care.

To be able to quickly fall back on ready-to-use injection molds, the following demads on injection molds storage and care must be fulfilled.

Every injection mold must be stored along with one molded part and a mold card in its own, easily accessbile space in the injection mold store.

Only ready-to-use, complete, clean injection molds may be stored. The purpose of also storing a molded part ( usually the last one from previous production) and a injection mold car5d bearing the article Nr. and the injection mold Nr. is to allow the injection mold to be uniquelyu identified Injection mold changes can be performed quick if the molds are ready for use when they leave the stores and can go into production without the need for major assembly or cleaning work. Every injection mold must therefore be a self-contained unit, i.e., it must not be made of parts that are required for other injection molds. Parts or groups of parts that are loaded or borrowed often disappear or are need elsewhere just when the injection mold is scheduled for use.The consequences are unneccessary, incalculable, and often time-consuming downtimes.

Cleaning work also delays the start of production. It should therefor be kept to a minimum. This means that special scare has to be taken of the injection molds and imposes specific deamands on the store, its cleanness and particularly the ambient conditions. Damp rooms promote corrosion. Once rust has begun to attack the injection mold, maintenance becomes very time consuming and very expensive. Often it is impossible. The injection mold store should therefore be kept at a constant temperature where possible, and dehumidified. Not much equipment is required for this, and it soon pays for itself.

Important to the accessibility of the injection molds is also the size of the store. It is essentially determined by the vehicles available in the factory such like forklift and the maneuvering space. When a job is complete, the injection mold may only be returned to storage when its suitability for future use has been chekced. The last produced with it can provide an indication of its condtion. They must be examined for dimensional stability and closely scrtinized. This will provide information about the state of the injection mold surface, the level of seal in the mold parting line ( perhaps flash formation on the molded parts), the level of seal in the mold parting line (perhaps flash formation on the molded parts) and the working order of the inectors, etc. If no deficiencies are found, the maintenance work then takes the form of the general care measures described below.